Mushroom Outta Love

I've had family in town for the past week, so apologies for letting the posts get behind. But I have still been making lunches and photographing them, so I'll just start unloading the backlog.

Because of said family, I didn't have the time to do anything exciting or themey. But with a bit of colourful fruit, it still looked pretty.

Feebz took in her lunch last Thursday cocktail sausages (on a better day, I might've cut them into octopus...es? octopi?), cherry tomatoes and raw mushrooms. The raw mushrooms were an experiment and a gamble; when they were small, the kids used to steal, not pick n' mix from the supermarket, but raw mushrooms and brussels sprouts, so I thought I'd see if the mushroom love was still there. It wasn't. But hey, she said she did try it and just didn't like it. In the lower tier she had apple slices, blueberries and strawberries. A few pretzels, a Babybel and a juice were added to finish the lunch off - and if memory serves, I think I added a banana last minute for her to eat at playtime. It was quick and easy.

And that's how you do what you do when your time is short!

Flower Power!

After doing the 'boy' dinosaur theme this week, I decided to do a 'girl' Flower Power lunch to even the score.

To make the bouquet, I started with kiwi fruit, cut like the dinosaur eggs, but with a banana slice and blueberry middle, I transformed it into a flower.

(I held the banana and blueberry in place with a cocktail stick cut in half. If you do this, PLEASE WARN YOUR CHILD so they don't eat it! I actually brought Feebz and Lollly through and showed them the process so they would remember. Later in the car, I asked Feebz what she needed to do to check that she remembered, and she answered 'Take the stick out'. Good.)

I then added halved strawberry 'roses' and blueberry 'bluebells' to finish the floral arrangement. (Lolly, who doesn't like kiwi, got a red strawberry flower instead of the kiwi and strawberry arrangment.) Several slices of ham rolled into a cone made the flower wrapping (again held in place with a cocktail stick), and a slice of cheese cut into the shape of a flower with a cookie cutter finished the bouquet.

The top layer was simply some crackers for the ham and cheese, pretzels, a string cheese and a brownie cut into a flower. An apple in the bag and a juice box finished the lunch.

Almost.

As I put the lid on the bento, I quickly racked my brain for something else I could throw in last minute and remembered these chocolate biscuits I bought in the oriental food market. A couple of these yummy treats will have made a very happy five year old.

Easy Peasy

Some days you just don't have time/ an empty fridge/ can't be bothered. Doesn't mean your lunch has to suffer though.

This morning's lunch took no longer than the average sandwich, bag of crisps, pudding and juice lunch we so often fall into the trap of making day in, day out.

I opened up the package of pre-cooked chicken chunks yesterday, so I had to use the rest up today. All the above lunch consists of is a chicken chunk wrap, a Babybel cheese, some blueberries, strawberries and sliced cucumber. In the lid I also added some Mikado chocolate biscuit sticks for a wee sweet treat. It took more time getting the items out of the fridge without dropping everything than it did to put this together. The wrap was definitely faster than buttering a sandwich and filling it. I suppose slicing the strawberries and cucumber might be considered by some to be time-consuming but seriously, it wasn't. A juice box and a bag of crisps (from Gran last night which we made them save for lunch today) completed this quick and easy lunch, and it is still pleasing to the eye.

And speaking of pleasing to the eye, isn't that lunch bag just the cutest?

Jurassic "Parked" Lunch

Get it? "Parked" instead of "Packed"?

I promise I'll work harder on my puns, guys. I promise.

But I'm trying to simultaneously feed Baby Jaguar and type at the same time, while my loads of laundry, dirty dishes and messy bedroom loom on my mind. Doesn't leave a lot of space for punning. That's my excuse. I'll try harder next time.

This morning, I made dinosaur lunches. Or shall I say "bento-saur"? (I'll try harder, I swear!) At first, the going didn't look good. Feebz came in, saw the dinosaur cutter and moaned, "Not dinosaaauuurrs! I'm not a boy!" I quickly turned it around by telling her you don't have to be a boy to like dinosaurs just like you don't have to be a boy to be a scientist, which is what she wants to be, or a doctor. Besides, I told her, some scientists, called paleontologists, study dinosaur fossils, ooh, how cool is that! And she was convinced. It's all about the spin, people.

(But then later Lolly came in, saw the dinosaurs and shrieked, "Aughh! I'm afraid of dinosaurs!" With nothing better to come up with, I just retorted, "No you're not.")

So.

I started out with the kiwi fruit. This is where the inspiration for the prehistoric theme came from. Not that fun lunches have to have a theme; it's just that I kinda get carried away sometimes if a theme presents itself. To make dinosaur egg kiwis, you just use a paring knife and cut a zigzag all the way around the kiwi. If your kids will eat the skin (the skin is edible, just wash it first), great! If not, either peel it or provide a good solid metal spoon to scoop it out. My kids like the skin by some miracle, so I leave it as is. I do cut the bottom and top off, though.

Then I used my dinosaur sandwich cutter and cut out ham and cheese sandwiches. To finish the scene in Feebz's, I added blueberry "skies" and moved onto the other half of her bento. With Lolly's, I just worked on a single bento tier (the pink one above). I cut out cucumber "trees" and added a few more cherry tomato "eggs". I've never tried "cracking" a tomato egg before, but I gave it a go today, and it turned out all right. I chopped a bit of banana with the peel (to keep it from absorbing too much tomato juice, though it will have absorbed some because I cut the tomato) for the "sun". There was still room, and I didn't want to fill it completely with more blueberry sky, so I went back to the fridge for inspiration. This is where rice always comes in handy, but it was too late for that. I saw the chicken chunks I'd bought yesterday, so used a few slices of it for "clouds" and then filled the rest in with blueberry.

Oh, and of course, I had to add a bit of flair: "ROAR" spelled in cheese. (Cut from a cheese slice with alphabet canape cutters.)

Hint. Chicken chunks will need to be tomorrow's lunch, now that I've opened the package.

They turned out all right, and what matters is that the kids were happy. I was worried though about the fact that the bentos weren't packed to the very top of each tier and that the contents would move around too much to be recognisable as a scene by lunchtime. I asked Feebz if her lunches still looked like pictures by the time she ate them. She said they were sometimes a bit moved around "like the wind moved them" but she could still see the pictures. Good.

To finish them off, I added a string cheese in the lids for snack time and a juice box and water bottle, and there they have it. Jurassic Parked Lunch!

The Lunch Box Shop

If I can be so diligent, I'm going to try to remember to post weekly shopping lists for lunches.

When I'm organised, I make a weekly menu and a shopping list, and I stick to it (not really). This afternoon, I popped out to get us a cheeky KFC bucket for dinner, when I remembered we were out of bread. So I slipped into Tesco for bread... and ended up with the above (plus 16 cans of Diet Irn Bru...) These items below should make up a majority of the lunches for the week, with the help of a few things already in the cupboards or fridge.

This week's lunch shopping:
Chicken Dippers x2 (not pictured)- £2
Bagels x2 - £2
String Cheese - £1.37
Babybel Cheese - £1
Strawberries - £2
Blueberries - £2
Kiwi - £1
Bananas - £1
Chicken Chunks x2 - £4
Cocktail Sausages - £2
Cream Cheese - £1
Wholemeal Bread - .80p
Wraps - .89p
KFC ketchup packs - FREE!
TOTAL: £21.06

I'm hoping the bagels will make some interesting sandwiches this week, and the chicken chunks will make good wraps. The kiwi will be used for 'dinosaur eggs' (you'll see these tomorrow morning!) and of course, the bread will make a few shaped sandwiches (ham and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and tuna mayo ingredients all in the house already).

And of course, the KFC ketchup will go with the chicken dippers! I asked for extra while I was picking up my bucket.

Lunch is Gasta

I spent all night last night obsessing over lunch for today.  I wanted to do a fish theme, as Fridays at the school canteen are Fish and Chips days, but everything I thought of required foods I didn't have in.

I woke up and commented to the Hubby, "I'm becoming a slave to this blog."  Already!

It's good though, because it was motivating.  I ended up reverting to the idea from yesterday of writing something with cucumber.

Thus, I present to you a 'gasta' lunch.

I started with pulling out berries, tomatoes and cucumbers from the fridge.  I pulled out my drawer of plastic tubs and bentos and rummaged around until I found some suitable containers, and the ideas finally started flowing.  I began with this clever little container from Sistema filling the top with EasiYo strawberry yogurt and the bottom with blueberries, raspberries and sliced banana.

I also uncovered this rice/egg mould in the shape of Hello Kitty, so I boiled some eggs (one for Feebz and a few for the Hubby's breakfast) and clicked it into the mould.  It was my first attempt at using the mould for eggs, and I was fairly impressed with how it turned out.

There was one more of the batch of jellies I'd made at the weekend left, so I threw that in... but I still didn't know what to make for the 'main'.

Aha!  I then remembered I'd bought pitta bread.  So I filled a pitta bread with shredded cheese, put it in a toaster bag and briefly toasted it to melt the cheese and sliced it up into quarters.  A few tomatoes tossed in, and it was ready for the fun part.  I sliced up some cucumber, punched out the letters and arranged them in the single bento container.

Tha e gasta!

 

 

Getting Started

When I first became interested in bento, I was overwhelmed by the beautiful, exquisite, and very Japanese bentos I was finding online. I was actually terrified to try it, because the bar was raised so high to make food look amazing. I put it off for ages because of this.

Then I found a blog (and I wish I still remembered which one it was) that just used plain, ordinary European food, like I am used to, cut into tiny pieces and fit into a box. She even sometimes used simple Tupperware for her boxes. It gave me hope, and I timidly ventured into the world of bento.

I am BY NO MEANS an expert. And I also by no means stick just to bento. When my daughters, Feebz and Lolly, were only little, I loved taking the time to make adorable little toddler-sized bentos. And when Feebz started school last year, I had all the best intentions of keeping it going. Her first day's lunch (top tier of her bento box) was this:

(One for Lolly, one for Feebz.)

But as the days passed, and I realised I had to make lunches every day, I soon confessed that, try as I might, I was not SuperMom, and could not face doing this every day. So I settled for just ensuring that I sent her to school with healthy, varied meals. This I could do.

And this is what I've started this blog for. To give other parents ideas for lunches, and I certainly hope it will give other parents an opportunity to share their creative lunch ideas with me!

Now, I've titled this 'Getting Started' for a reason. Particularly if you are interested in bento, there are so many cute and interesting accessories out there, that it can be overwhelming to get started. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need it all before jumping in, but I'm here to say YOU DON'T. I've been collecting bento accessories for about four years, so I have accumulated quite a few things for making my lunches exciting, but to start with all you really need are:

-Some boxes. Plain plastic sandwich boxes or clip-safe style boxes or even simple leftovers tubs are fine. -A few cookie cutters. -A few small plastic tubs (the ones used for storing baby purees are fantastic) and maybe some silicone cupcake holders to use as dividers.

When doing your shopping for the week, stock up on small things that can get quickly thrown into a box around your main meal (which for me often ends up being a sandwich of some sort), like blueberries and raspberries, cocktail sausages, cherry tomatoes, olives (if your kids will eat them, mine won't), etc. But beware of foods that are soaked in syrup or brine, as they can leak onto other foods if not dried properly!

I also like making 'lunchable'-style lunches of crackers, cheese and ham, which is simple, but again, remember that if you are packing crackers with something moist like ham, you will make the cracker go soft. Always pack dry with dry and wet with wet.

Traditional bento almost always includes rice. As much as I'd love to be so traditional, rice very rarely makes it into lunch, though I have been trying different ways of getting it in. Rice moulds are fun, and so is colouring the rice with food colouring and using it as a background for a decorative bento. But for those of you like me, it's best to just forget traditional. I don't claim to be writing a bento blog; it's a lunch blog. I just happen to use bento boxes sometimes to pack my lunches in.

One more (big) thing. I rarely pack sugary snacks in my kids' lunches, except for fruit and yogurt. Sometimes I'll put in a small treat, like a cookie or a piece of chocolate. In general, I try to keep lunches to things like this:

-Main meal (chicken, sausage, sandwich, pasta, etc)

-Fruit

-Vegetables

-Cheese

-Sometimes crisps (if baked, not fried) or crackers

-A 'dessert' of sugar-free jello or homemade yogurt (store-bought if I'm out of EasiYo!) or something homemade like a cookie

-Drink (always 100% fruit juice, not juice drinks, and always a water bottle outside the bag)

If I pack raisins, treats or store-bought yogurt, that is the 'dessert', as these things are packed full of sugar. I know kids need fuel for the day, so I prefer to carb them up with natural sugars like fruit. Homemade yogurt has sugars in it, yes, but the benefits of the live bacteria, to me, outweighs the disadvantage of sugar. Not to forget that bread, crisps, crackers and pasta are all full of carbohydrates too. Lunches without a traditional 'dessert' will not be depriving them of carbohydrates, to be sure!

So, there's some wee start-up tips. If you make a fun lunch, take a photo and post it for all of us to see! It's not like you have to do this every day; if you find one morning that the mood strikes you, go for it. Then let me know how it turns out! Did your child eat it? Was your child excited about it? And don't forget - fun lunches can be for grown-ups too! What would your partner think if you sent him or her into work with little heart-shaped pizzas or star-shaped burgers?!